A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press. Daily timeline of events in Iraq as collected from stories and dispatches in the French and Italian media: Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).

Friday, March 16, 2007

Dead Reporters

Col. David Sutherland, based in the provincial capital of Diyala (North-East), says attacks on US troops are on the increase in that province, while confessional conflict is down by 70%....

In the rest of the country, five people were killed in acts of violence including 3 by a homemade bomb in Kirkuk (North) and one in the shelling of the Sunni al-Khilayni mosque during Friday prayers.

In a message read during Friday prayers, radical Shi'ite Moqtada Sadr exhorted his partisans to resist occupation forces and to put pressure those Iraqis involved in the Baghdad security plan. More than 1,000 people demonstrated against US troops in Sadr City....

Gen William Caldwell, spokesman for the US forces in Irak, declared that Sadr was in Iran, which his supporters deny.

In Basrah, 10 prisoners held by British forces their prison, after having exchanged clothes with visitors.

Meanwhile, Kurds commemorated the chemical attack on Halabja by Saddam Hussein. Families of the victims demanded assistance and compensation from the government, which the say ignores them.